This invention relates to improved longline hauling and stowage apparatus useful in bottom fishing. The invention provides an improved mechanized hauler that stows the hooks, gangions, and ground line in an orderly manner, as in Alex U.S. Pat. No. 4,266,359, and that permits subsequent mechanized baiting and resetting of the longline. In the interim, the stowage arrangement provides direct access to the hooks and gangions for inspection and needed repair. The invention is herein illustratively described by reference to its presently preferred form; however, it will be appreciated that certain modifications and changes therein may be made with respect to details without departing from the essential features involved.
Various mechanized longline haulers and stowage devices have been contrived heretofore in an effort to reduce the labor and to speed up the process of hauling and resetting these lines. Most prior proposals addressed to the practical needs of the fishermen were overly complex and expensive or fell short in one or more functional aspects, such as stowing the longline components not only in an orderly fashion for resetting, but in such a way as to make it convenient for the fishermen to inspect the condition of this gear and to make needed repairs therein, such as replacing gangions or hooks, retying gangion-to-ground line knots, etc. The above-mentioned Alex patent discloses a longline stowage container and hook retention apparatus directed to such objectives. The present invention is directed to an improved hauler for use with a longline stowage means such as that disclosed in said Alex patent and, more particularly, concerns a simple, safe and reliable longline hauler apparatus which is also compact in form and readily suited to the space accommodations available on most standard bottom fishing vessels.
Other objectives of the invention include providing a hauler which will accommodate differences in diameter of ground line, differences in hook size, and differences in gangion lengths and knot sizes. Moreover, the apparatus continues to function, usually without interruption, despite tangled gangions or gangions partially wrapped around the ground line. It also continues to function when occasional individual incoming hooks become so oriented that they are not picked up by the hauler hook guide so as to be led properly into the stowage means guide track.
Still another object hereof is to provide a simplified and effective sheave-type hauler and, in association with it, a line stowage bin and an effective means operating between the sheave and the bin for drawing the ground line from the hauler sheave and continuously casting the ground line into the bin in an orderly arrangement of stacked loops or coils while concurrently accelerating the successive gangions in their turn along a guided approach into stacked relationship on a guide track extending along a side rim of the bin. Here, simplicity, compactness and effective, trouble-free operation represent important objectives.